Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Kreng - The Summoner [Miasmah Recordings Promo]

Recently released on February 6th via the ever thrilling Miasmah Recordings label is "The Summoner", the first Kreng album after a four years period of relative silence in terms of new musical works. And, at least according to the album info sheet attached to the promo, it seems like the Dark Ambient / (Neo)Classics composer has been going through some deep personal shit in the meantime that has led to this new album which is dealing with the feelings of grief, loss and mourning on a conceptual level, musically stepping away from a sample based approach in terms of production but relying on an ensemble of 12 string players directed to create unusual droning and plucking sounds on their instruments. Especially the super dense atmosphere created by climaxing Drones is overwhelmingly dark and threatening here whilst the hectic, nervous and often dissonant bow movements create an unresting feel of despair and distress before falling into sudden near silence in tracks like "Anger" whilst tunes like "Bargaining" or even "Depression" serve a more comfy, warm though even melancholia-heavy space in which - this goes for "Depression" only - slow tribalistic drums do trigger ancient memories and subconcious tiers of the human self alongside epic Ambient string arrangements. "The Summoning", a 15+ minutes conjunctional effort created with the help of Amenra, starts out as a cinematic, tension-breathing Ambient / PostPostRock affair before introducing a deep but funky bass guitar repetition that - after about three free-floating minutes - gives way to heavily distorted slo-mo riffing and essential apocalyptic DoomHardcore - an epic musical evolution within 15 minutes and by far the most fascinating tune on this album. After this heavy tournament we see the final "Acceptance" serving a more forgiving musical closing, being a nearly unprocessed piece of calm and tender Piano Ambient that might seem unexpected to some but perfectly makes sense in terms of what the album is all about.